Research Services

Executive Edge: CMO

Executive Edge: CMO™ (EECMO) provides c-level executives with the actionable insight in an easy to consume format that delivers breadth of coverage across all marketing functions and on sales and marketing alignment strategies. EECMO offers an objective, third-party perspective to validate decisions, innovate, benchmark and challenge your organization to create the most effective marketing function possible.

This membership-driven program combines the benchmarking data, best practices, analytic tools and thought leadership required to prove the return on investment of marketing’s contribution to the business. Coverage areas include:

Functional Alignment – Understand the executive-level linkages between marketing and sales, how to leverage marketing operations and the CMO’s relationship to the Board of Directors
Budget Analysis – Assess the effectiveness of your marketing budget against your peer group with access to planning, allocation and comparison data from our SiriusIndex™ of Fortune 500 and SMB companies
Measurement – Understand the key metrics and KPI’s that should be a part of the marketing dashboard
Organizational Structure – Understand the pros and cons of centralized vs. decentralized marketing functions, resource hierarchy and allocation, and when to outsource
Global Deployment and Management – Understand the role corporate marketing should play in the deployment and management of marketing initiatives across the worldwide enterprise
Sales and Marketing Integration Model (SMI) – includes the processes, strategies and technologies required to achieve effective sales and marketing alignment
Sales and Marketing Framework – a baseline model of the sub functions required in today’s b-to-b environment
B-to-B Holy Trinity – a systematic combination of reputation, demand creation and sales optimization strategies to drive predictable, accelerating revenues
Next Generation Organization Charts – depict how today’s b-to-b sales and marketing functions should be structured for maximum impact

DELIVERABLES

Interact with SiriusDecisions research analysts in the manner that suits your needs. You will receive ongoing support, learning, coaching and validation through best practices research and phone-based inquiries with analyst experts.

RESEARCH

Research Briefs: Three to four research notes are delivered to you each month and are archived on our client-only research portal, available 24x7.
Vendor Profiles: SiriusDecisions follows a full spectrum of marketing, sales and product vendors and technology to help in your purchasing decision process.
Core Strategy Reports: Key observations and commentary that address critical models, frameworks and strategies. Core Strategy Reports cover complex issues and introduce new areas of research in a white-paper format.
SiriusTools: Templates and Excel-based decision support tools that make it easy to apply SiriusDecisions frameworks and models.

ADVISORY

Analyst Inquiry: Analyst inquiry privileges are offered as part of the EECMO service and can be scheduled on an as-needed basis with our in-house analyst experts. These 50-minute phone-based discussions are scheduled through your account executive.
Annual Benchmark: Each year, SiriusDecisions will benchmark your spend levels and detailed program allocations against our SiriusIndex™ of b-to-b companies, providing you with an assessment of resource gaps and misalignments as well as insights into whether you are over- or under-spending.
Client Roundtables: Tap into an invitation-only peer network via quarterly half-day forums, virtual or onsite roundtables, as well as discounted pricing on all SiriusDecisions conferences.
Webcasts: Learn from hot-topic presentations that you can play at your convenience or share with team members for training and “lunch and learn” purposes.

Upcoming Webcast: What are the 5 things all best-in-class organizations have in common? Learn more at our June 5th Webcast.

Below, please find a partial list of recently published EECMO research.

Brief
Account-Based Marketing: Deliverables and Accountability

In this brief, we explain how marketing and sales can establish agreements on which account-based marketing deliverables will delivered by marketing, and how sales will respond.

Brief
Introducing the SiriusDecisions Innovation Strategy Framework

In this brief, we introduce the SiriusDecisions Innovation Strategy Framework, a model that organizations can use to rationalize their investments across four quadrants of customer-driven innovation.

Brief
Foundations of Positioning and Differentiation

In this brief, we introduce key considerations for positioning and differentiating an organization or one of its offerings based on the type of demand being created: new concept, new paradigm or established market.

Brief
Advanced Analytics Roles in B-to-B

Advanced analytics – the use of statistical and mathematical methods to understand and predict customer and prospect behavior – requires a specialized team. In this brief, we describe four roles that support an advanced analytics initiative.

Brief
Revolution or Evolution? The State of B-to-B Social Media

In this brief, we explore four major b-to-b social media trends that are relevant to all b-to-b organizations.

Core Strategy Report
Perpetual Demand Creation

This SiriusDecisions Core Strategy Report presents best practices and key observations that will help make perpetual demand creation (PDC) a reality for more organizations.

Brief
Creating the Future Roadmap

In this brief, we present four best practices for documenting a future roadmap and successfully communicating an offering’s long-term possibilities.

Brief
Reversing the Rearchitected Waterfall

In this brief, we explain how to use rearchitected demand waterfall conversion rates to model demand performance and budget requirements over a 12-month period.

Core Strategy Report
The SiriusDecisions Demand Creation Framework

This SiriusDecisions Core Strategy Report reviews the key components of the SiriusDecisions demand creation framework, including strategic, organizational, infrastructure and process considerations required to support demand, as well as execution approaches that work in concert to create demand.

Brief
Aligning Product Management and Demand Creation

In this brief, we identify activities and deliverables within the SiriusDecisions Product Marketing and Management Model that help product management to maintain close alignment with demand functions.

Brief
Shared Services Execution: Adopting an Agency Approach

In this brief, we explain the structural and process components required for transforming a stagnant marketing shared service group into a high-performing internal service provider.

Brief
B-to-B Personas: Customer Role Attributes

Marketers must understand the shift in perspective that happens once a buyer becomes a customer. In this brief, we explain how to extend the b-to-b persona model to incorporate customer roles.

Brief
Building the B-to-B Crisis Communications Plan

In this brief, we describe five building blocks for a best practice b-to-b crisis communications plan.

Brief
Introducing the SiriusDecisions Partner Loyalty Framework

In this brief, we introduce the SiriusDecisions Partner Loyalty Framework, which provides three sets of best practices for capturing and maintaining partner mindshare in order to build long-term loyalty.

Brief
Large Account Marketing: The Planning Process

In this brief, we describe a four-stage process for building a large-account marketing plan.

Brief
B-to-B Market Sizing: A Disciplined Approach

In this brief, we present four steps to effectively size a market, which helps gauge the opportunity for a new offering as well as prioritize investments during annual business planning.

Core Strategy Report
The SiriusDecisions Campaign Implementation Process

In this SiriusDecisions Core Strategy Report, we identify the steps involved in developing and implementing integrated campaigns and highlight operational considerations for each step.

Brief
Measurement Within the Campaign Framework

In this brief, we describe the core components for measurement within the SiriusDecisions Campaign Framework, as well as key timing considerations for capturing campaign inputs and evaluating the results.

Brief
The CMO Buyer Persona: Content and Tactic Preferences

In this brief, we present findings from our 2012 C-level buyer persona study, focusing specifically on the content and tactic preferences of CMOs.

Brief
Conducting a Field Content Collection Week

Lack of knowledge about field-created content represents a lost opportunity to leverage the talent within sales teams, and to improve sales content and enablement programs. In this brief, we describe how to fill this knowledge gap with regular field content collection weeks.